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Windows 7: removing VISTA (c:\) with win7 (J:\) - how???

hello,
i have recently installed win7 (which is AWESOME!!!) on J:\ and have my earlier VISTA (which is crap installed on C:\ as shown below.

HDD1 - 1TB
C:\ - 200gig has VISTA
D:\ - 800gig has just files

HDD2 - 1TB
J:\ - 200gig has win7
H:\ - 800gig has just files

note that each installation is on a separate PHYSICAL hdd!!!

my machine is DUAL BOOT (meaning i can choose which OS to boot at startup)
and i DO NOT have a cd-drive.

so now i am running win7 and am trying to rid myself of the VISTA install but when i tried to format C:\ (in computer management), the 'format' option was not available or rather windows (7) would not let me format. i was also UNABLE to format c:\ drive in 'my computer'

my guess is that there are some files that are being shared between the 2 OS's but i'm not 100% sure.
i also read that the boot.ini or bootsqm.dat might have specific boot information that if formatted, would render my PC non-bootable. is that true? and if so, how can one avoid this problem?

and, if i do somehow manage to format C:\ drive (VISTA), will my windows drive (which is drive J:\) have an impact on my PC since its J: and not C:???

i can't be the only one in this situation since sooooo many have tried win7 the last few months.

1 - how can i best go about removing that partition and/or formating that partition????

2 - is there anything i need to do before removing the older VISTA installation? are there any shared files that maybe the new win7 install would use? i'm referring to documents and settings folders and such.

hope that wasn't too confusing, thanks for reading it all and thanks for any input!!!

Keyboard qwerty Hard Drives Maxtor, Western Digital Internet Speed 22 Mb/s @ home, 1 Gb/s @ server Other Info All of my systems still run fastest on XP 32-bit for the most part. Win7 is fun to play with, but I still prefer XP for raw speed, security, and functionality.

1 - how can i best go about removing that partition and/or formating that partition????

As you have Vista and 7 on separate hard drives, I suspect if you remove the Vista hard drive, your system will boot to 7. If true, you should have a 100 MB boot patition in the front of the 7 hard drive and can change the boot drive to the 7 drive in the motherboard BIOS and boot to 7.

If not, if you do not have the 100 MB boot partition, I would suggest you use the "Drive Management Utility" in 7 to shrink the 7 partition to leave 100 MB at the front of the hard drive. Then remove (at least temporarily) the Vista drive and do a start repair or repair install to restore the boot partition and enable booting to 7.

Quote: Originally Posted by liquidmonkey

2 - is there anything i need to do before removing the older VISTA installation? are there any shared files that maybe the new win7 install would use? i'm referring to documents and settings folders and such

There are no files shared between the Vista and 7 partition. After you can successfully boot to 7, you can return the Vista drive and use the drive space as you wish.

BTW you can change the drive letter of the J: drive to C: from the 7 "Drive Management Utility". I prefer to configure my dual boots so that what ever OS I am booting to at the moment is seen as the C: drive.

How did you install 7 on the second drive by usb key or mounting the iso image? One thought would be performing a custom install of 7 to replace the Vista installation on HD #0 and then use the Windows Easy Transfer option to backup the present 7 installation's files and settings to be restore on the Vista replacement installation of 7.

Why? and also a welcome to SF! liquidmonkey, you end up with a second working installation of 7 for other configurations or simply as one working main copy you can take your time while trying things out on the present installation.

If something goes wrong you can simply see that converted into one main storage drive later and still have a working copy of 7 on the first drive without ever touching the bios. When seeing more then one installation with one on the extra drive I added in for testing running into problems the second host I should install is now the actual host.

The replacement of Vista would still present the boot order by adding the first 7 install automatically into the new install's BCD store.

When seeing the first host drive for the 64bit RC while still having Vista installed on another drive I ended up replacing Vista with the 32bit RC on the second of two matching drives later for an array with the first seeing the second 64bit install there. The entries for both of those two were still intact on the host drive when later reformatting the pair to setup a temp array to sse how 7 worked out there.

Once that was broken up and the host was unplugged along with the ohters the first saw another clean stand alone install of the 64bit(and a good move as it turned out) now the default. When replugging the other drives back I could boot into that installation with the first host back as default again.

The BCD works the same for 7 as it did for Vista where a new install of 7 would simply be used to replace Vista on the default drive. The other option would be unplugging the Vista drive long enough to perform a repair install on 7 insuring that as a stand alone drive. Once the Vista drive is plugged back in the Vista primary is simply wiped.

The problem then seen however is now either having a second 7 install one for the 32bit or 64bit there or a second storage partition on a drive that could set aside for storage if not something else. For a single large storage parition the Vista would be removed, the second would need to be moved forward afterwards in order to expand that to fill the drive back in again.

Substituting the letter H: for J: here I ended up seeing a different message on the screen for the 3rd 64bit RC still linked to the first host install's bcd there. Now to see if that drive is now bootable on it's own!

Open an elevated cmd prompt and type: ( press enter after each command)

J:\Windows\system32>bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us /s J:

Then type :

J:\Windows\system32>bootsect /nt60 J: /mbr

Updated NTFS filesystem bootcode. The update may be unreliable since the volume could not be locked during the update: Access is denied.

\??\PhysicalDrive1

Successfully updated disk bootcode.

Don't worry about the ntfs filesystem bootcode not being reliable - you already have it on that volume. As long as you get the "Successfully updated disk bootcode" you will be fine.

Ensure 7 partition is marked Active.

Go into Bios and set the 7 HD before the Vista HD in the Bios boot order.

Reboot. Check in Disk Management that 7 partition is now marked as System.

wow, great advice everyone, thanks!

just curious before i proceed...
will changing my c: drive letter to another one screw things up? i would need to change c: to x: (for example), then i could change j: (where win7 is) to c:.
would that solve everything?

also, i'm not going to do a reinstall of anything as i'm sure there is a work around as point out by the above quote.

to answer 'how i installed win7?' - i mounted the iso image in daemon tools and went from there.

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